The 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth - Bringing Digital Earth down to Earth.

The 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth

Digital Earth is a visionary concept for "spaceship Earth" sparked by R. Buckminster Fuller, grokked by the Apollo astronauts returning from their moon missions, and popularized by Vice President Al Gore.

On June 5th 2007, the 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE5) will open in the Bay Area of San Francisco, California, USA. The symposium will span four days and will address a broad national and international audience across a spectrum of industry, academic, government, and citizen attendees. All individuals who share a common interest in the concept of a digital Earth are urged to participate and attend.

This international vision encompasses the virtual and 3-D representation of the Earth with vast amounts of scientific, natural, and cultural information that is spatially referenced and interconnected with digital knowledge archives from around the planet to describe and understand the Earth, its systems, and human activities.

Digital Earth is a global partnership, nurtured internationally by the 1999 Beijing Declaration, composed of NGOs, educators, business, and government leaders collaborating for a better future. This egalitarian and democratic participatory partnership is harnessing unprecedented technical and educational facilities over the Web for exploring the Earth, better understanding its systems, and investigating impacts and remediation responses of human activities. In essence, Digital Earth is dedicated to raising humankind’s collective IQ or knowledge for survival of our planet and species.

The Digital Earth community is dedicated to building a virtual global commons to promote "down to Earth" solutions supported by cooperative web-based protocols using standards, databases, analytical and visualization tools that will foster the creation of appropriate applications for a sustainable future. A consortium of global experts founded the International Society for Digital Earth in 2006 to promote the evolution and implementation of the Digital Earth vision.

The Digital Earth vision embraces a philosophy that any citizen of the planet, linked through the Internet, should be able to freely access a virtual world of information and knowledge resources. This philosophy supports the dream of ubiquitous education for the people of the planet. A rich convergence of technological advances, active visionaries, and recognition of the paramount need for humans to better understand the Earth and its systems comprises the character and history of this dynamic and exciting enterprise.

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